What “setting up” an agent means
An agent is installed once: server, model, harness, Telegram. That is installation. Setup begins after it: the agent learns about you, your work and your rules. It is like a new employee getting up to speed.
You set up an agent with words. You type or dictate by voice, the agent writes the important parts into its knowledge base and relies on them in later tasks.
Day one: tell the agent about yourself
Start with an introduction. One long message or a few minutes of voice is enough. Cover five things.
- Who you are and what you do
What you work on and your roles: owner, accountant, parent. What a typical day looks like.
- People
Key clients, partners, staff and family: who is who and how to address them.
- Rhythm
When you work, when not to disturb you, what time suits you for summaries.
- Boundaries
What the agent does on its own and what only with your approval: client emails, payments, deleting files.
- Style
How to write to you: short or detailed, formal or casual, text or voice.
At the end, ask the agent to retell what it remembered. You will see right away what it got wrong, and that is easy to fix.
Week one: simple tasks
Pick first tasks where a mistake is easy to spot and costs nothing.
- A summary: what is on today in your tasks and inbox, and what not to forget.
- Reminders: “on Thursday, remind me to call the supplier”.
- Drafts: an email to a client, a reply to a review, a post. You read and send them yourself.
- Digests: send a document or a long email and ask for the gist in three points.
Every task is a chance to correct. The agent does not know your habits yet, and the first week goes into teaching them.
How to correct the agent
Correct it right away and specifically, as you would an employee. A vague correction the agent will interpret its own way; a specific one it will follow.
| Vague | Clear to the agent | |
|---|---|---|
| Tone | “Write normally” | “Write to clients formally, no emoji, five lines max” |
| Deadline | “Remind me later” | “Remind me on Friday at 10 am” |
| Result | “Sort the inbox” | “List client emails with no reply: who, about what, how many days they have waited” |
| Rule | “Not like that” | “Always send invoices to me for review, never send them yourself” |
If a correction applies to all similar tasks, say so directly: “remember this as a rule”. The agent will write the rule into memory and keep applying it. A couple of days later, check: ask which rules it knows about you.
Week two: scheduled tasks
Once the agent stops making mistakes on simple things, give it regular work. It does this on its own, without a message from you.
- Every morning, a summary of the inbox and the day's tasks.
- On Mondays, a to-do list for the week from your notes and agreements.
- On Friday evening, which clients are waiting for a reply.
- Once a month, a reminder about payments and renewals.
The schedule is also set in words: “every weekday at 9 am send me an inbox summary”. If the summary is inconvenient, ask for a different format.
How the value of memory grows
In the first days the agent often asks again: who Sergey is, what was agreed with a client, where to save a file. That is expected: the memory is still empty.
Every task adds people, decisions and results to the knowledge base. After a couple of weeks the agent recalls on its own what you agreed with a client last week and puts it into the email. In NekoAgent memory is an Obsidian knowledge base on your server: you can open and edit the notes by hand, and they survive restarts.
Common mistakes in the first two weeks
- Giving everything at once. Ten tasks on day one, and it is unclear where the agent went wrong. Add them one or two at a time.
- Silently redoing the agent's work. If you fixed an email and did not tell it, it will repeat the mistake.
- Setting no boundaries. Keep client emails, payments and deleting files for your approval.
- Giving up after three days. The value grows with memory, and the first days are the agent's weakest.
Setup with a turnkey install
You do not have to do the first setup alone. In NekoAgent the first install happens on a call with a curator, about two hours: together we connect the server, the engine and Telegram and show you how to work with the agent and how to train it further for your tasks.
After that, during paid support Iris monitors the agent around the clock and helps bring it back after failures (reasonable efforts, no guaranteed response time), makes nightly encrypted backups and ships tested updates you install with one button. Support is free for the first 30 days, then 750 RUB a month for every 5 agents.
How to install an agent yourself or turnkey is covered in How to create your own AI agent: DIY or turnkey, and how an agent differs from a chat in AI agent vs AI assistant.
Let's install and set up your agent together
Plans from 24,900 RUB for three installs. The first one is on a call with a curator, with training.
Key questions
How do I set up an AI agent?
Tell it about yourself, your people and your rules, give it simple tasks and correct it in words when it gets something wrong. After a week, add scheduled tasks. All of this happens in a chat, without code.
How long does setup take?
The introduction fits into one evening. After that, setup happens as you work: in the first two weeks you correct the agent more often, then corrections become rare.
Do I need to know how to code?
No. You set up the agent with ordinary Telegram messages, in text or voice. Only those who install the agent on a server themselves will need the terminal.
What should I do if the agent makes mistakes?
Say right away and specifically what is right, and ask it to remember this as a rule. Keep important actions on your approval until you are sure the agent does them correctly.
What should I tell the agent first?
What you do, who the key people are, when not to disturb you and what it may do without asking. It will learn the rest as it works.
